The Greatest Chillers Ever

Polar Exploration Mushes Ahead In These Releases

January 10, 1999|By DAVID LAWRENCE Book Reviewer

To many, the Heroic Age of Polar Exploration died late in March 1912 with Robert Falcon Scott and two others in a blizzard-buffeted tent 11 miles from a life-saving supply depot on the icy wastes of Antarctica. But a recent gust of new and reprinted books reveals Scott's doomed party were neither the only, nor were they the last, heroes from the twilight of that age.

"A First Rate Tragedy: Robert Falcon Scott and the Race to the South Pole," by Diana Preston, is one of several new books out on Antarctic exploration. Preston chronicles Scott's life and two expeditions to Antarctica, naturally focusing on the final and fatal dash to the South Pole. The strength of Preston's narrative is in the way she recreates the dreadful conditions and the agony that Scott and his men - Edgar Evans, Lawrence "Titus" Oates, Henry "Birdie" Bowers and Edward Wilson - faced as weather, scurvy, malnutrition and the knowledge that they had been bested by Roald Amundsen all exacted a crushing toll.

Preston's narrative moves quickly, rarely getting mired as Scott's men often did in the soft, unstable snow, but it occasionally jolts an American reader with obscure references and allusions that only the English could understand. Preston has an annoying habit of giving only last names of personalities upon first reference. The pressures Scott faced by competition from Amundsen and Ernest Shackleton are duly noted, but as characters in themselves they are not given enough of a presence. Finally, although the book is illustrated, the reader is left wanting more.

Caroline Alexander's new book, "The Endurance: Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition," along with reissued editions of Shackleton's "South," tells the story of the Endurance expedition of 1914-1916. Shackleton and his men - including the indefatigable, multitalented photographer Frank Hurley - set out on an attempt to cross the Antarctic continent. Unfortunately, in February 1915, sea ice trapped the ship within a day's sail of reaching shore, preventing the crossing party from landing.

The doomed Endurance drifted north with the ice until it was crushed and sank in late November 1915. The 28 men then survived in camps on ice floes as little as 2 feet thick and sensitive to the motion of the sea. When the floes on which they camped disintegrated the following April, the men set out in three lifeboats for a six-day sail to Elephant Island. The glacier-capped island offered a place to camp, but it was far afield of where rescue parties would search.

Shackleton then selected five men - including navigational genius Frank Worsley, who had been captain of the Endurance, and the indestructible Thomas Crean, who had accompanied Scott up until the final, fatal run for the Pole - for a desperate attempt to sail 800 miles in winter across one of the world's stormiest oceans. The six left Elephant Island in an open, 221/2-foot-long lifeboat, the James Caird, faced up to 80-knot winds and 60-foot waves, and with only four navigational sightings in 16 days, reached their destination, South Georgia.

The Caird was landed on the uninhabited side of South Georgia. Shackleton, Worsley and Crean then spent three days crossing the unmapped mountain spine of the island to reach Stromness, a Norwegian whaling station on the other side. The other three members of the James Caird crew were saved the day after Shackleton, Worsley and Crean reached this outpost of civilization. Eventually Shackleton, on his fourth attempt, returned to Elephant Island with a relief ship and rescued the rest of his men.

Not one man was lost.

Alexander's book accompanies an upcoming exhibit on Shackleton to open in April at the American Museum of Natural History in New York (she is guest curator for the exhibit). Her narrative would benefit from an index and leaves the reader somewhat adrift when she introduces the scientists and crew. However, it picks up steam once the ship is stranded in the ice and, supplemented with "South," well illustrates how the men maintained some semblance of normal life and work in extraordinary circumstances.

Speaking of illustrations, Alexander's book is a must buy for the photographs alone. Hurley was a masterful, if somewhat manipulative, photographer. The reproduction of his work is at its best in the Alexander book. Alexander's own research into the history of the photographs is rewarding, too. Hurley, unburdened by journalistic or scientific standards, all too frequently modified the images to heighten dramatic effect. Most of the changes are innocuous, but Alexander reveals one case in which Hurley's efforts result in a tragic act of vandalism of his own work.

Douglas Mawson, in "The Home of the Blizzard: A True Story of Antarctic Survival," narrates the experiences of his men during the Australasian Antarctic Expedition of 1911-1914. Mawson had accompanied Shackleton's expedition of 1907-1909.